Various types of hand-held electronic reading devices have been proposed to electronically display textual information for reading by a user. A typical hand-held electronic reading device includes a display device to display the textual information and a user interface which allows a user to navigate through the textual information and access various features of the electronic reading device. The display device and the user interface are incorporated in a hand-held housing to facilitate portability of the electronic reading device.
Many hand-held electronic reading devices have a user interface in the form one or more external buttons. The buttons are depressed in a predetermined manner either to navigate through the textual information or to access various features of the device. However, many hand-held electronic reading devices implement the user interface in a manner which does not provide a simple, intuitive, or efficient method for navigating the textual information or for accessing the features.
The lack of simplicity of using current hand-held electronic reading devices along with the lack of comfort in handling many of these devices result in some people preferring to read a real paper book rather than using a hand-held electronic reading device. Further, current hand-held electronic reading devices provide only a limited number of features from which the user can choose.